John Keats
1795–1821
Biography
John Keats was an English poet born in London in October 1795. He trained in medicine in the city before turning fully to poetry, and his first book appeared in 1817. His longer poem Endymion, published in 1818, received hostile reviews. Soon after, he nursed his brother Tom through tuberculosis, and then fell ill with it himself. He died in Rome in February 1821, when he was not yet twenty-six.
Keats's reputation grew only after his death. His poems were received coolly in his lifetime, but by the end of the nineteenth century he had a secure place in the English literary canon, and his odes, including “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, are still among the most read and studied poems in English. His narrative poems on medieval and romance themes, such as “The Eve of St. Agnes”, influenced later poets, among them Algernon Swinburne and William Morris.
Two of the books on this site are his. Endymion: A Poetic Romance is the 1818 poem that drew such harsh reviews, and Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems is the 1820 collection that gathered his later narrative work, including “Isabella”, which retells a tale from Boccaccio. Both show the richly sensuous imagery for which he is remembered.
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Books
Endymion: A Poetic Romance
by John Keats
In Keats's long poem the shepherd prince Endymion dreams of a goddess he loves, the moon, and wanders over the earth, under the sea and through the air to find her. It opens 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever' and is told in four books of couplets.
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems
by John Keats
The last book of poems Keats saw into print, in 1820, gathers three long verse tales of love and enchantment with the great odes, from the nightingale and the Grecian urn to autumn, and the unfinished epic Hyperion. This is the poems alone, from the 1909 Oxford edition, without…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.